re doing and whether they are doing
anything, so that now the State Department will not be the last place
where information is received about the misdeeds of a consul.

They made provision that all fees should be turned into the Treasury and
the sole compensation of consuls should be their salary, thus closing
the door to temptation.

They did in that act a number of very good things for the consular
service. There was a clause in the bill originally which provided that
all appointments to the higher positions in the service should be by
promotion from the lower positions, and that all appointments to the
lower positions should be upon examination. That was stricken out
because it was considered that Congress had no constitutional right to
limit the President in that way. There is a good deal to be said for
that view; but it is equally true of appointments to the army and to the
navy, yet there have stood upon the statute books of the United States
for many years provisions for the filling of higher grades in the army
and navy by promotion, and for the appointment to the lower grades only
upon a satisfactory examination. And those provisions, while doubtless
the President could break over them with the consent of the Senate,
nevertheless have constituted a kind of agreement between the President
and the Senate, having the appointing power, and Congress which creates
the offices and appropriates the money to pay them, as to how the
offices are to be filled. I would like to see that kind of an agreement
applied to the consular service, so that the method of selection could
be settled, and permanently settled, as it has been in the army and the
navy.

Immediately after the passage of the consular reorganization act with
that clause omitted, the President made an order, known as the Order of
June 27, 1906, in which he provided that all the upper grades should be
filled by promotion and that the lower grades should be filled only upon
examination, and prescribed the method of the examination, and also
provided that as between candidates of equal merit the appointments
should be made so as to equalize them throughout the United States, as
they ought to be equalized so far as it is practicable, and also that
the appointments should be made without regard to the political
affiliations of the candidates.

Under that order we will have the opportunity, in filling all of the
important consulates, to get the best possible evide